A man was arrested after stealing an ambulance from The Villages Regional Hospital.
Danny Lee Konieczny, 60, of Lady Lake, is facing a felony charge of grand theft of a motor vehicle following his arrest late Tuesday night by Lake County sheriff’s deputies.
Konieczny had been transported to the hospital earlier in the day by Lake EMS.
He stole a Sumter EMS ambulance owned by Rural/Metro, which contracts with Sumter County to provide emergency medical service.
The ambulance is equipped with a GPS tracking device and deputies followed the trail and arrived at 11:45 p.m. at 3710 Gregory Road. Konieczny was found hiding in the trunk of a vehicle parked in his garage.
He said he stole the ambulance because he was frustrated because he had been waiting for a long time to be seen.
“He was upset because he was just put in the hallway to wait and was not being seen at the hospital,” the deputy wrote in the arrest report.
Konieczny told deputies he checked to make sure no one was in the back of the ambulance before he drove away.
He had parked the ambulance in the driveway of his neighbor’s home. Konieczny was mad at the woman for previously calling law enforcement on him.
Rural/Metro personnel had been able to watch the theft of the ambulance on a live feed and could see Konieczny driving the ambulance.
The ambulance was recovered intact and returned to Rural/Metro.
Konieczny was booked at the Lake County Jail on $10,000 bond.
